UN panel told Israeli flotilla commados had 'license to kill'

The Arab Israeli MP Haneen Zuabi told a human rights inquiry that the soldiers made no attempt to avoid bloodshed aboard the Turkish aid ship to Gaza.

AMMAN // The outspoken Arab Israeli MP Haneen Zuabi on Tuesday told a UN human rights inquiry into Israel's deadly raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla that its commandos had a "licence to kill." "I told the UN investigators in Amman that the Israeli attack was violent from the start and that the Israelis had a clear licence to kill, and they did not even try to avoid the bloodshed," Zuabi told AFP. She was a passenger on the Mavi Marmara ferry trying to bust Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip when nine Turkish activists were killed on May 31 in an Israeli commando raid. "I sensed that the investigators were serious about the probe. They asked clear questions and I gave them clear answers. I stressed that the Israeli commandos wanted to kill the activists, who were unarmed." Israel says its naval commandos only resorted to force after being attacked as they reached the deck of the ferry, but the activists insist the soldiers started firing first. Zuabi, an MP with Balad, a left-wing Arab nationalist party, sparked outrage in Israel for taking part in the pro-Palestinian protest flotilla. In July, Israel's parliament voted to strip Zuabi of her diplomatic passport and parliamentary funding for legal defence. The UN investigators arrived in Amman on Sunday to interview most of the 33 Jordanians on board the ship. The mission is to report back to the UN Human Rights Council at its next session on September 13-October 11. The three experts mandated by the UN rights council have already interviewed unspecified witnesses in London and Geneva, and have met the Turkish and Israeli ambassadors in Geneva. Israeli officials have rejected the council's mission as biased. * Agence France-Presse